What do the KOR ONE hydration vessel and RKS guitar have in common? Plenty. Not only did a BusinessWeek cover story on the RKS guitar bring KOR Water and RKS Design together, the lessons RKS designers learned from the guitar were used to create the same level of passion and elegance in the KOR ONE bottle.
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Taking the time to teach is one of the most rewarding ways of contributing to the growth of our profession. Through the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to teach and speak about design and design thinking at schools that include Harvard, SCAD, and Art Center College of Design.
Read more of Ravi’s blog post on Fast Company here.
As I watch the debate over health care reform, I’ve begun to see clearly how designers can create a solution that wouldn’t be such a bitter pill for so many and would help quiet the level of disagreement currently being experienced by so many.
Here’s how my plan would work:
Singer-songwriter Dave Carroll’s United flight had just landed when he heard a passenger behind him exclaim, “My god they’re throwing guitars out there.” Members of his band, Sons of Maxwell, looked out in time to see their guitars being tossed by baggage handlers. When Carroll later confirmed that his beloved guitar was a casualty in the melee, it wasn’t just his $3,500 Taylor guitar that was broken. His heart was broken, too. He was able to have the guitar repaired for $1,200, but it will never be quite the same. “It plays well but has lost much of what made it special,” says Carroll.
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Back in the day—and by “the day,” I mean the legendary days of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and legendary computer scientist Alan Kay—we would say, “We spend millions in research and development figuring everything out, and then the first consumer who walks up to the machine can tell you everything that’s wrong.” Today, market research is a $19 billion industry and focus groups are one of the most expensive types of market research. The question is, what role should design play in the process?
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To build on the remarkable success of the original KOR ONE Hydration Vessel, KOR Water enlisted RKS to create a Brand Trajectory and Product Proliferation Plan that would amplify the authenticity of the KOR brand. The first result of this effort is KOR’s new Thirst for Giving™ program to raise funds for water-related charities and help increase understanding of the vital role clean water plays in all our lives.
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There’s a tale often told in design circles of how, in the heat of the space race, NASA paid over a million dollars to develop a pen that worked in zero gravity. The Russians, however, took a different approach. They used a pencil.
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In my last post, I shared five short-term strategies for surviving the downturn by using design thinking as a roadmap to connect your business with consumers. Once you’ve weathered the worst of the economic storms, it’s time to plan for the future.
To survive and thrive into the next upturn, you must innovate now. Innovation fueled by consumer insight will propel your company into the future, empowering you to rocket past your competition.
Here are five ways you can position your company to thrive as the economy recovers.
A CEO was looking for a world-class designer and leading material provider who had his back in creating a high-design hydration vessel that celebrates the beauty of water. And he insisted the material be crystal clear, durable and BPA-free.
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History has shown that hard times can provide as much opportunity as pitfalls. Want proof? Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox are just three innovation-driven companies that were founded during the Great Depression. More recently, both Apple and Microsoft began in the midst of an economic trough in the mid-1970s.
In this post and the next, I’d like to share ways in which design thinking can provide a roadmap that will help you position your company to not only survive the recession, but thrive through the recovery.
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